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Then there's the wrap up of the Whitey Bulger trial in Boston. Bulger was a mobster who was in tight with Justice Department officials and Massachusetts politicos, (Bulger's brother, a Democratic pol, was president of the Massachusetts Senate) and after his conviction one juror reported that she was "stunned" by the extent of government corruption that came out in the trial. That's impressive. It's getting harder and harder to stun people with government corruption these days.
And that's the problem. Enough breaches of trust -- and I haven't even started to hit all the scandals out there, by a long shot -- and ordinary people will start to assume that the whole system is corrupt.

And I do know that it requires an extraordinary amount of naiveté to believe that the government, the 'system', man's authority itself is not extraordinarily corrupt, prejudicial, arbitrary, and fickle, by design and by definition. Why should anybody who has seen the news twice ever be surprised?

a democratic pol...-------"Double oh seven..."

"Sir?"

"Just leave the Baretta..."-------Most people try to take things out...

You realize that what you are "willing to say" actually *is*, for the most part, the Republican system, right? Smaller state governments who run the day-to-day, with a centralized federal government that only works in extremely limited capacity?

Granted, in the intervening years we've grown to much larger populations, but the Republican system itself idealizes smaller populations over larger ones. It's the Democratic Party that has been pushing for over a century on pulling us under one governmen

No, you're wrong. The principles of Republican government are the same as what Republican government actually is. You could say that we do not currently have Republican government, but you have no basis for saying that it's changed.

The start of the change was when State Sovereignty was destroyed by the Civil War. States that wanted to leave, were not permitted to do so.

Since then, every expansion of the federal government, every intrusion into State Sovereignty, from the monopoly over the money supply in 1873 to expansion of the commerce clause to the draconian shutdown of the abortion debate under Roe V. Wade, has been about removing the Republican form of government from the system.

Again, nothing changed about what the Republican system of government is. That's like saying "democracy" changed. It didn't. Democracy is. Whether we have democracy, that's the question.

... was when State Sovereignty was destroyed by the Civil War.

That didn't happen. Reconstruction harmed state sovereignty, the Civil War didn't.

States that wanted to leave, were not permitted to do so.

That's not really true, actually. No force was used to keep them in the union. The South started it, literally.

But again, irrelevant to the discussion, since the Republican system has never changed.

Since then, every expansion of the federal government, every intrusion into State Sovereignty, from the monopoly over the money supply in 1873 to expansion of the commerce clause to the draconian shutdown of the abortion debate under Roe V. Wade, has been about removing the Republican form of government from the system.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

I see nothing that says "to protect the privacy of a woman we must allow murder", which is what Roe V. Wade said.

False. It does not say that. You're right, in my view, that abortion is "murder" (for some definition), but the decision and its proponents do not express that view, and do not see it that way. The decision does not say that.

I don't see pregnancy as an "unreasonable search or seizure", do you?

No, but if abortion does not unjustifiably take a human life -- as they incorrectly believe -- then such an investigation about abortion is obviously an unwarranted search / seizure.

Nor anybody else who knows there are higher powers than the US Government

False.

Look, I get it. You think abortion is wrong. So do I. But you said something simply false: that Roe v. Wade said we must allow murder to protect a woman's right to privacy. It did not say that. It said that abortion is not murder. You can disagree that abortion is not murder, but that is what it actually said.

Abortion is murder. Any attempt to redefine it as not murder- for any reason, including privacy- makes the entire government and the legal system illegitimate. I follow a higher power than the US Government, and will not stoop merely because of citizenship to lie for political correctness. Same with other sins against chastity- contraception, abortion, extramarital sex. I can no longer lie to support this government.

It is that simple, and that correct. It doesn't matter that they tried to define it as "not murder" because they support murder. The very act of removing the absolute right to life, means that they do not deserve their own lives.

That's the easiest to understand part- abortion is murder and therefore the Supreme Court supports murder, regardless of anything else they say.

The Court said that to protect a woman's private decisions between her and her doctor, we must allow abortion

True.

which *by definition* is the murder of the unborn.

False.

And I don't mean by that, that abortion is not the unjustified killing of a human. I mean that "murder" is a legal term of art, and not a moral description. Whether or not it applies to a specific taking of a human life is a technical matter, not a moral one. That is why we have multiple terms for the taking of human life: "manslaughter," "murder," "act of war," and so on. Whether or not abortion is murder is strictly a legal matter.

Why not just admit you have no idea what you are talking about, instead of spouting unintelligible nonsense?

What I was saying is that you were speaking in a legal context. Therefore, the words you use have specific technical meanings. And it is a *fact* that "murder" does not apply to "abortion" in the legal context. And this has not one damned thing to do with morality. This doesn't mean abortion is not wrong, or is justified, it only means that, in this context, it is not murder. It's a fact. Your d

I think, pudge, you're making the clear ethical point, whereas MH42 is making the moral point.
That most people and dictionary writers try to teach that ethics and morality are fungible is, I submit, a major conceptual problem with the English language. I treat them as overlapping, but slightly disjoint circles in a Venn diagram [theothermccain.com].
Very helpful in discussions like this.

I'm only ~300 pages into Shelby Foote's opus, but I think that the Civil War was written right into the Constitution at the 3/5ths Compromise.
Abolition moved south over the course of the 18th & 19th centuries. If you pick at the details, the Civil War was a super-saturated solution that started precipitating with the election of Lincoln.
Chattel slavery was as immoral (almost all would agree) as the entitlement slaver we have today (my opinion). So the South's cause was fundamentally immoral, even if (

"You realize that what you are "willing to say" actually *is*, for the most part, the Republican system, right?"

Not since 1840 or so.

You're confusing the party with the system. "Republican" is a form of government, it's guaranteed to the states ("The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,"), and it is what one normally means when they say "Republican system." And what it is, has not changed.

The final nail in the coffin of federalism as an ideal was with Roe V. Wade.

False. That makes as much sense as saying that the Sedition Act was the final nail in the coffin of free speech.

It wasn't the Democrats who wanted to keep the South from leaving the union.

"Guaranteed" is a strong word for a country that refused to let states leave. Roe V. Wade basically shut down our democracy, made it the choice between Hudge and Grudge from then on out. Voting is worthless; anybody you elect will be indebted to the federal oligarchy long before the election, from either party.

And it isn't just the Democrats who are interested in centralizing control; it's the Republicans too. For all their talk of small government, Reagan, Bush, and Bush all supervised the largest gover

"Guaranteed" is a strong word for a country that refused to let states leave.

Shrug. I was quoting the Constitution.

And again, you're wrong, it didn't do that.

Roe V. Wade basically shut down our democracy

Good! Essential civil and human rights should not be subject to demcratic whims. That is why I favor a Republican government over a Democratic one.

Voting is worthless; anybody you elect will be indebted to the federal oligarchy long before the election, from either party.

Rand Paul?

Reagan, Bush, and Bush all supervised the largest government expansions of the modern era.

You realize that when Reagan and Bush were President, the people running the expansion -- the Congress -- were Democrats, right? And under Clinton, when we slowed way down, the Congress was Republican?

NEITHER side is interested in radical decentralized government to the point of returning to the Confederation of States envisioned in the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation that existed before 1796.

Rand Paul is indebted to his campaign contributors, just like every other politician. Only difference is he's got a bunch of stock market paper billionaires backing him.

Article I Sections 8 & 10 violates the Republican form of government directly, as do the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments. As long as those are still in force, it is possible for the courts to interpret the laws in ways that destroy local power (and they have, repeatedly).

Rand Paul is indebted to his campaign contributors, just like every other politician.

Only if he chooses to be.

Article I Sections 8 & 10 violates the Republican form of government directly

False.

I won't bother going through the rest if you can't get that one simple thing right.

You have a completely false notion of what "Republican government" is. You apparently (to me) think it means states can do whatever they wish. That isn't it, at all. It means the central government has significant powers, but that they are very limited, and that the state gets the rest, and that they are both subject to democratic whims to a large extent, tempered by the rights of the states,

So you are saying, if you pay somebody to do something, that person is NOT obligated to do what you paid him to do?

My point is that I said that we need * NO GOVERNMENT* over 100,000 citizens. You claimed that's the way federalism works. Now that I come up with specific examples of State Autonomy that are not allowed, you are claiming that State Autonomy is not a part of Republicanism.

If the central government providing SERVICE instead of imposing laws is not Republican, then the Republican form of governm

There is no evidence a single one of Rand Paul's campaign donations was a payment to do something. Please stop lying. Thanks!

I find your naiveté amusing. Is it willful? Sure looks like it... Rand Paul, comparatively speaking, is an ankle biter. Being all 'populist' and stuff, with all the barking, is easy for those with no real influence, looks good on the TV. Provides an illusion of 'opposition', or tries to magnify the microscopic differences (of method, not goals) amongst them all. Kucinich was th

There is no evidence a single one of Rand Paul's campaign donations was a payment to do something.

I find your naiveté amusing.

Interesting that you didn't give a single shred of evidence of where, or even an argument that, he was paid to do something, in your attempt to show that I am naïve for saying there is no such evidence.

I wish I could YAWN big enough to express the pointlessness of your comment.

Had it in this country for 10,000 years before white man brought malaria and The Dalles dam went in and drowned Celilo Falls. If only the missionaries had seen the value of the Potlatch and how it fit in nicely with Catholicism!

Correct... Mr. Smith refuses to accept that all governments are subservient to, because they are created by economic power, capitalist and communist alike. And he is just repeating ditto-head nonsense over and over again, damn near word for word.